Thank you Humbug.
So, what I'm thinking is: should AMD stop making big chips and focus on something the size of a Ryzen 9700?
Or, if slightly older nodes are price competitive, should AMD try to squeeze the best possible from nodes one generation behind and openly offer players a trade-off between price and efficency?
Basically declaring the best node available is for CPU and Instinct while GPU stays on the previous CPU node/cheaper alternative (Samsung?).
This way volume woes should be significantly lessened and price could be competitive.
There are also some R&D advantages: You set the microarchitecture with iGPU/APU and refine it on the same one when you actually switch it to dGPUs, basically pulling a tick/tock strategy having sinergy with fab node refinements.
Intel tried this and failed but AMD is much better positioned to take advantage of a full stack strategy.
The strategy is to go back to making workstation GPU's and gaming GPU's the same silicon, so if they don't sell them as gaming GPU's they stand a better chance moving them as workstation GPU's, i don't know if this is true for upcoming RDNA 4, probably not, possibly RDNA 5.
AMD wouldn't go Samsung, too far behind and they have a good relationship with TSMC that they would want to maintain, the best and most expensive node right now is TSMC N3, that's a 3nm node, its what Apple are currently using and Intel for their 200 series CPU's and APU's.
I think AMD are very likely to use TSMC N4, 4nm for RDNA 4, they use that for their Ryzen 9000 series, its a very solid node and as shown with Ryzen 9000 AMD are able to design very good efficiency with it.
They may also go back to it being monolithic, as you can see from my pictures and explanation current Radeon 7000 series (RDNA 3) is a multichip design, its a very successful design and the first MCM GPU but i think AMD want to go back to basics with RDNA 4, i think that's a shame, AMD are the best when it comes to inventing innovative architectural designs and i would have liked to have seen the next evolution of their designs but i think they don't want to spend the R&D for it anymore, they can't justify it. AMD are such a talented company in this way, many world firsts to their name, its a shame they don't have Nvidia money to play with.
The new GPU's will be smaller, they are not making high end GPU's anymore, highest end RDNA 4 will be the RX 8800 XT, equivalent in performance to an RX 7900 XTX with much better Ray Tracing and about the size on an RX 7800 XT, around 250 - 300mm, that's a bit larger than a Ryzen 9700, about 50 to 100mm larger but i don't see how you can get it any smaller with that level of performance and 300mm or less is quite small for a GPU.
You're right that AMD will continue to design GPU technology because their APU's are very successful.
The problem tho is this: An RX 7800 XT chip, just the chip costs about the same to make as a Ryzen 7950X, they currently sell that CPU for £500, bargain... its £100 cheaper than a Core Ultra 285K and better.
So take another look at the images i posted, what you see for the 7950X is pretty much how it sells, the only thing that is missing is the lid, the heat spreader, $5, they sell that at a supply chain who take their share who sell it to OCUK who take their share, so AMD probably sell this £500 CPU for £350 to £400, its costs less than £100 to make it retail ready, £200 to £250 profit, while that seems like a lot remember than they spent serval hundred million $ designing it, i don't know that but i would imagine so.
The same R&D cost applies to the GPU. AMD sell that to their partners, like Sapphire who design and manufacture their own PCB's and coolers for them, CPU's don't need to be shipped with coolers and they don't have PCB's, as such. So to sell what is now a £420 GPU they need to leave enough money for Sapphire to make a profit after designing and making the PCB and cooler.
Look at this thing, this is a 7800 XT Nitro PCB, i can't find the Pulse PCB but they are made to the same standard, believe it or not... there are thousands of individual components on this thing and some of them are quite expensive, costing multiple $ individually.
Sapphire have to design all of this, make it and then they sell it in to a supply chain, AMD are not selling these chips to Sapphire for £350 to £400, the thing costs £420 retail, they are selling it at a little above cost, that's fine if you're selling 30 million of them, but they aren't, that's why AMD profit from these in the last quarter was $12 Million, or in other words nothing, if they sold 120K units that's $10 profit on each one sold. Now ask your self how many hundreds of millions did AMD spend developing this thing? Ryzen is propping up Radeon in a very big way.
AMD Navi 32, 2430 MHz, 3840 Cores, 240 TMUs, 96 ROPs, 16384 MB GDDR6, 2438 MHz, 256 bit
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